Schiaparelli Mars probe's parachute 'jettisoned too early'

Europe's Schiaparelli lander did not behave as expected as it tried to land on Mars on Wednesday. Data recovered from the probe during its descent indicates that its parachute was jettisoned too early. The rockets it was supposed to use to bring itself to a standstill above the ground also appeared to fire for too short a time.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has not yet conceded that the lander crashed but the mood is not positive. Experts will continue to analyse the data and they may also try to call out to Schiaparelli in the blind hope that it is actually sitting on the Red Planet intact.

In addition, the Americans will use one of their satellites at Mars to image the targeted landing zone to see if they can detect any hardware. Although, the chances are slim because the probe is small.

For the moment, all Esa has to work with is the relatively large volume of engineering data Schiaparelli managed to transmit back to the "mothership" that dropped it off at Mars - the Trace Gas Orbiter.

This shows that everything was fine as the probe entered the atmosphere. Its heatshield appeared to do the job of slowing the craft, and the parachute opened as expected to further decelerate the robot.

But it is at the end of the parachute phase that the data indicates unusual behaviour.

"We cannot resolve yet under which, let's say, logic that the machine has decided to eject the parachute. But this is definitely far too early compared to our expectations," Andrea Accomazzo, the head of operations for Esa's planetary missions, told BBC News.

Not only is the chute jettisoned earlier than called for in the predicted timeline, but the retrorockets that were due to switch on immediately afterwards are seen to fire for just three or four seconds. They were expected to fire for a good 30 seconds.

In the downlinked telemetry, Schiaparelli then continues transmitting a radio signal for 19 seconds after the apparent thruster shutoff. The eventual loss of signal occurs 50 seconds before Schiaparelli was supposed to be on the surface.

Many scientists here at mission control have taken all this information to mean one thing - that the probe crashed at high speed. It is likely it went into freefall a kilometre or two above the surface.

Officially, though, Esa experts say they cannot at this stage fully interpret what happened until a velocity profile for the probe is properly reconstructed.

Comments

Well, we all know that space explorations that relay on new technologies are a high risk enterprise - what is important is to learn form both positive and negative attempts and in this case find out exactly what happened during this mars landing
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